AwesomeCloud, Rick and I are living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and posting our adventures in pictures.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

14 months!

Today Yun Gui is 14 months old.

We still haven't heard anything from China. Not even a whisper. No updated medical records, no pre-approval, nothing. On the other hand, we haven't sent them the photo book either. We haven't even made one yet. My husband keeps saying we should, but I don't think he's picturing the same thing I am. I think it's very important to get inside a toddler's head and create pictures that his young, developing brain can relate to, regardless of what we see when we look at photos. He just wants to collect a bunch of photos. We are therefore getting nothing done.

The builders are working hard. I've been scavenging some of their discarded materials so I can build a playset. I've made illustrations of it already. I should draw up plans and post them here.

A friend promised she'd give me her huge childhood collection of beanie babies and other stuffed animals. I'll probably keep a few for Yun Gui, and the rest will go to China with us to be donated to the orphanage. Beanie babies make good luggage padding! And what kid doesn't want a kitten-sized stuffed animal to love and hug?

I wonder if any studies have been done on the relationship between stuffed animals and attachment disorder. I know studies have been done on monkeys. They found that a baby monkey would choose a cuddly, soft 'mommy' that didn't provide food over a non-cuddly food dispenser 'mommy'. In other words, baby monkeys would willingly starve to death for a hug. That's a scary thought, but an important one.

This morning I wandered around in a cemetery, gazing reverently at all the gravestones marked 'captain'. Not all of them were military captains; in fact I'm sure most were civilian fishermen. And my cemetery foray wasn't planned; it just happened to be near the coffee shop, and I just happened to have some free time for a stroll after I bought my muffin. But I'd been wanting to do something reverent for Memorial Day, and that's what i ended up doing.

I also flew in a biplane yesterday, and exchanged WWI and WWII factoids with the pilot's buddy while we waited for the plane to get prepped. I guess that was related to Memorial Day. A lot of servicemen died in biplanes. They weren't the safest military vessels of their era, let's just say.

About Me

This is my baby. We worked long and hard to have this baby. Well, actually, it wasn't so bad; we had a good agency, and because we were interested in adopting a boy, our wait was pretty short. Now he's home, and he's awesome. "AwesomeCloud" is the rough translation of his Chinese name, and he lives up to it.